In the Hollow of the White Hazel
by OlegGunnarsson
Summary: Lily Potter has second thoughts about hiding her family in Godric's Hollow. The alternative she chooses turns out to be nothing short of brilliant. One-shot.


The portkey deposited Peter Pettigrew in the entrance hall of a small manor house. As he got his bearings, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Steady, Pete." said Sirius Black.

Peter looked around. He saw the floo to one side, though the fire had been put out for the evening, to prevent anyone else arriving by that means. The paintings on the walls were all in the muggle style, still landscapes and such - obviously, Lily's doing. Apart from the staircase heading to the upstairs, the house felt rather plain.

Sirius watched his friend take everything in. "I'm sure they'll put their own touches on the place, Wormtail." he said, a grin on his face. "They'll have plenty of time, now that they're officially in hiding."

Peter could only nod. "True enough," he said. "And who are they making the secret keeper this time, Padfoot? Or are they even using one?"

"Oh, they are all right." Sirius replied. "But I'm not the secret keeper this time." He smacked Peter on the shoulder, before walking into the house. "You are."

Peter stood there, stunned. _They're making me the secret keeper?_ He couldn't keep the feral grin off of his face. _The Dark Lord will be pleased._ He moved to follow Sirius.

In the parlor, they found James and Lily Potter speaking in quiet tones. Both looked up as the other two marauders entered. "Padfoot, Wormtail! Welcome to Lily's Pad!"

Lily rolled her eyes at the name. "We're not calling it that, James." She gave him the look - her green eyes blazing just enough to hammer her point home. James saw that look, and knew it all too well - but even his wife's ire couldn't dampen his spirits.

If this went as planned, they were safe forever.

While James and Sirius got drinks for themselves, Lily signaled Peter to join her at the desk on one end of the room. "Did Sirius explain what we're doing to you?"

Peter nodded. "I'm honored, Lily." He looked his friend's wife in the eye, and lied his arse off. "I won't fail you."

Lily smiled that soft smile of hers, and placed a hand on Peter's shoulder. "Thank you, Peter." She took a parchment off of the desk, and handed it to him. "When we cast the Fidelius, you will become the secret keeper. That means you will be the only one who can tell anyone the secret." Her eyes remained on his, and her voice took on an intensity he had never heard before this night. "You cannot have the secret taken via legilimency, nor can a pensieve depict the memory of receiving the secret or becoming the secret keeper. The way we are casting the Fidelius tonight, only you can speak the secret or write it down - but you must do so exactly as you learned it, or else the charm will not allow you to pass the knowledge on. Do you understand?"

Peter nodded.

"Good. I'll see if the others are ready." Lily indicated the parchment in his hand. "You'll want to read that through a few times before we begin." Off his look, Lily chuckled. "Trust me. I live here and I can't even say the stupid name." She then turned and walked over to her husband.

Peter looked down at the parchment, and paled. _Well,_ he thought, _this explains it._ His heart started to race as he read through the text of the secret. _No matter, I only need to say it twice. Once here, and once before the Dark Lord._ He continued to practice, muttering to himself as he went.

James watched Peter as he paced, reciting the secret to himself as he did so. "Are we sure this will work?"

Sirius took a sip of his scotch. "Yep. Even the people who live here can't pronounce the whole name. And the short form is no good, you have to use the whole name."

"You can use whatever name you want, Padfoot," James replied. "As long as it matches the form you use when you cast the spell. Take your house, for example." He ignored Sirius' eye roll at the mention of his family's townhome. "You could make the secret that the Blacks' London House is at 12 Grimmauld Place, or that 12 Grimmauld Place is the Blacks' home in London Town." He sipped his own drink. "As long as the secret keeper uses the exact phrasing from the moment the charm is cast, the secret can be passed along."

The three looked over at Peter, who seemed to have broken out into a cold sweat. Lily sighed. "And Peter? Will he be alright?"

James and Sirius shared a look. "Sure, Lils," said James. "He'll do the job."

Lily's eyes snapped over to her husband. "James Charlus Potter…." she began.

"Lily, relax." His grey eyes met her green. "He will do exactly what we need him to do."

oOoOoOoOo

After the Fidelius was cast, the knowledge of the secret was removed from the world. Sirius, James, and Lily blinked for a moment, looking around at the parlor. Each had a disorienting feeling that they did not quite know where they were.

Peter watched them for a moment, before taking up the parchment. "The Potter's Secret Hideout is the Hunting Lodge north of…." and here he paused once again, for he could not read the words - they were the secret, and the secret had not been written by the secret keeper. Closing his eyes, he very slowly pronounced the name of the town, as he had practiced it.

"The Potter's Secret Hideout is the Hunting Lodge north of Llan-Fair-Pwll-Gwyn-Gyll-Go-Ger-Ych-Wyrn-Brod-Wll-Llan-Ty-Silio-GoGo-Goch."

Lily had closed her eyes when the secret began to wash over her. She felt her mind adjust to the new information, and her location snapped into place. The wards, too, seemed to embrace her, telling her that the Fidelius had taken properly. Then she heard Peter finish the name of the town, and her eyes snapped open. Something was wrong, but she could not tell what, exactly.

Before she could say anything, James placed a hand on her elbow. She looked at him, and saw him shake his head very slightly.

Peter was facing away from them, taking a drink of his own scotch with a shaking hand. None of them saw how wet his eyes were.

"Pete, it's alright, the hard part is over." said Sirius.

"I know, Pads, I know." said a very quiet Peter Pettigrew. _If I wait too long, I'm going to screw it up,_ he thought. "That was just a mouthful, you know?"

Sirius laughed at that. "That's what you all get for letting me pick. Lily said to pick a small village with a Welsh name, so I did." He raised his glass to the Potters. "I never expected her to accept my choice, though."

Lily grinned, the tension beginning to leave her. "A deal's a deal. Either he picked the town or he agreed to be the secret keeper. Shame he's so lazy, or you wouldn't have the job."

"Right," Peter said. He drained his glass, before setting it on the table. "Does anyone else need the secret?" _Please say no please say no please say no_

James and Lily looked at each other. "Harry's too little to notice, Dumbledore knows about the mail drop at Gringotts, and Remus is on the continent… so no, I think we four are plenty for now. Have Dumbledore ask us if someone else needs us, though."

"Of course." said Peter. He had calmed down by this point, though the name of the town kept running through his mind.

Sirius saw his friend, and how nervous he had been. "Sure you don't want to stay the night, Pete? Surely the Potters can spare a room for you."

Before Lily could scold Sirius for inviting people to stay in _her_ house, Peter shook his head. "No, thank you, but I really should get going." He stood up, looking once more at his friends. _One last time,_ he thought sadly. "Thank you again for trusting me."

Lily got up as well, and gave Wormtail a hug. "Always. Take care of yourself, Peter."

James and Sirius gave him hugs of their own, before leading him to the entrance hall, and the waiting portkey.

oOoOoOoOo

Ninety minutes later, Peter Pettigrew wished for death.

"SAY THE NAME!" shouted a very angry Lord Voldemort, his rage pouring through the wand and into the _cruciatus_ that currently had Wormtail screaming.

"Llan-Fair-Pwll-ahhhhhhh!" Peter could make it only a little ways into the name of the village, before the pain crushed his ability to think. _Kill me_ , he thought angrily.

Eventually, Voldemort lifted the torture curse, leaving Peter in a quivering heap on the floor of Malfoy Manor. Lucius and Bellatrix shared a look of worry - even before he had been tortured, Peter's fear had somehow prevented him from revealing the secret. The name of the village had come out as a jumble of nonsense, useless as a secret. Whether the secret was charmed somehow against disclosure, or whether Wormtail was simply paralyzed with fear, no one knew. What was clear was that when the Dark Lord did not feel the magic of the secret, he reacted poorly.

It should have been a simple thing. The Potter's home was a Hunting Lodge north of…. where? That was when Wormtail collapsed the first time. After that, well, let it stand that the torture curse helped not at all. This, clearly, was something more than the usual _Fidelius_. It was magic they did not know, and could not understand.

Augustus Rookwood walked over to them, holding a muggle atlas. _Leave it to the unspeakable,_ thought Lucius. "Any luck?"

Rookwood nodded. "It sounds like he is trying to say this name." He pointed down to the map, indicating a village in Wales.

Bellatrix looked over his shoulder, paling at the sight of the name. "You're fucking kidding me." she said quietly.

Rookwood shrugged. "He hasn't gotten more than five syllables in, but from what he said?" Rookwood tapped the map with his finger. "That's my best guess."

Lucius considered the map in front of him, then glanced up at the Dark Lord, who had once again unleashed a _cruciatus_. "Are you going to tell them?"

Rookwood looked from Wormtail to the Dark Lord, and then to Lucius. "Fuck no."

oOoOoOoOo

James Potter crawled into bed, the day's events leaving him exhausted. Lily was already there, looking at him strangely.

"Alright, James, want to let me in on the secret?" There was no anger in her voice, but he could tell that she would not be denied. He handed her the parchment from earlier. Lily looked down, and saw the text of the secret. Sirius had written everything out for Wormtail, who had practiced himself to exhaustion trying to wrap his mind around the town's name.

"Sirius may have screwed up, Lils." he said quietly. "He wrote the town name down, breaking it out so that Pete could pronounce it during the charm. After we finished, he said it just as he had during the charm - and I know you felt the secret's magic, just as I did."

Lily nodded. "The _Fidelius_ worked, we all felt it. And Peter would have known when he couldn't read the secret that he didn't write."

"Correct," said James. "But Sirius is the one who wrote that parchment. Look at the name of the village, honey."

She read off the name. "Llan-Fair-Pwll-Gwyn-Gyll-Go-Ger-Ych-Wyrn-Brod - oh for fucks sake," she said, catching the mistake. "It should be Drob, not Brod."

James gave her a grin. "Yup. So Peter has to get the name of the village wrong in that exact way to pass along the secret."

"He managed to give it to us," she replied.

"True," he conceded. "But he did that moments after we cast the charm, and only after reading it through with that mistake in the text for half an hour." James chuckled.

She gave him a piercing gaze. "You think it's him, don't you? The spy."

James had the grace to look sheepish. "Put it this way. I know it's not me. Sirius swore the Godfather's oath, so it can't be him as long as Harry is staying with us. So it's either Remus or Peter."

Lily held his eyes. "James, I thought you said it was Remus. That's why I trusted Peter."

He took his wife's hand. "And that's why I didn't say anything when I noticed the mistake in the name. Think, Lily, if they capture him and he breaks, and they try to get the name of the town from him, he won't be able to repeat it. They'll think he's not the secret keeper at all. And if they don't get the hint and try to look it up, so they can prompt him, they'll be looking up the correct name. The one we _didn't_ use."

"Oh my God," she whispered.

oOoOoOoOo

Voldemort looked from Rookwood to Lucius. "And you're sure that this is the name of the village?"

Rookwood kept his head down, but the Dark Lord did not ask questions without expecting answers. "Yes, my Lord. The name matches what Wormtail has managed to say so far, and there are no other villages we can find with anything close to that name."

The Dark Lord nodded, taking the scrap of paper over to the weeping marauder on the floor.

"Listen well, Wormtail. That is the name of the town. You will speak it, and the secret, completely and accurately, or you will die." He leveled a sneer at the traitor. "See, am I not merciful?"

Wormtail seemed to shrink in on himself. "Y-y-y-yes My L-Lord." he said quietly.

"Good. Now read."

Peter Pettigrew could tell that the name was wrong. It wasn't what he had learned earlier. But at this point, after attempting to betray his friends, and _failing_ even at that? He just didn't care.

"The Potter's Secret Hideout is the Hunting Lodge north of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch." The syllables rolled off of his tongue, and he made a credible attempt at the various accents and inflections demanded of the Welsh name. Once he finished, he looked up at the Dark Lord, who was already hissing in anger.

The cold look he saw in those red eyes stilled his heart. _Oh,_ was his only thought, as the green curse struck him. He never heard the howl of anger from the Dark Lord.

oOoOoOoOo

Lily's eyes snapped open. "James?" she asked. The magic had woken her from a dead sleep, and she had a sinking suspicion as to why.

"Yeah," he said, sadly. "We're going to need a new secret keeper."

"Did he betray us, or get caught?" she asked, her voice quiet.

James reached over, pulling his wife close to him. "I don't know, baby."

Lily let out a sad chuckle. "Sounds like Sirius is staying for a while."

James held her tight. "Think, though, what would have happened if we were still in Godric's Hollow?" He felt her shiver, but she said nothing. "Lily, you just saved our lives."

* * *

 _ **A/N:**_ **This was a Reddit Prompt that went horribly wrong. Or horribly right, I suppose, if you're the Potters.**

 **Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is a real village in Wales, known for having one of the longest place names in the world. I'm surprised, honestly, that poor Wormtail didn't just shit himself and flee when he saw that name. No need to type that all out, though, just google "Lianfair" and you'll get to the correct article.**

 **The name translates as "Saint Mary's Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel** **near to the Rapid Whirlpool of Saint Tysilio of the Red Cave", or something close to that, as various translations exist.**

 **Lily is the brightest witch of her age for a reason - but James is no slouch, either. Sirius, meanwhile, is a smart man - but lacks the precision, shall we say, of the fifth Marauder. He's an Auror, not a Scholar.**

 **Feedback, as always, is welcome.**


End file.
